After Jean-Antoine Watteau Antoine (1664-1721)

A full-size Mid 19^th Century studio copy of the 18^th Century genre picture entitled Récréation Galante by the French Roccoco painter Antoine Watteau.

Set in a broad, faded-gilt composition french style frame with deep scoop sides, decorated all over in husk-and-guilloche with gadrooned and heavy applied corners of shell-and-foliage.

The original painting, which comes from Watteau’s late period, was conceived with the intention of combining various motifs and figures drawn from his earlier work and expressive of his enduring ideals of courtly love, reverie and aristocratic elegance. The composition is based on fourteen smaller, known works from Watteau’s oeuvre, both sketches and paintings, and thus represents something of an epitome of his entire work and spirit.

Six known full-size copies of the picture by Watteau are known to have been painted on-site and in view of the original canvas.

The original picture was long displayed in the Small Gallery of Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam in Brandenburg until it was handed over to the German Royal Museums in 1888. It now hangs in the Berlin State Museum.